Weight Weenies

I've always noticed a lot of play in the arm of my Force rear derailleur, I've never had a problem with shifting but it's always seemed odd to me

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fwiw my sram red shifts fine, but the axis of rotation of the cage is certainly not parallel to the axis of the rd mounting bolt...

with the hanger perfectly aligned and no chain (so nothing applying force to the cage) the cage at the extreme of clockwise rotation (viewed from drive side) gets much closer to the spokes than in normal position and at the limit the cage will just clip them, this position would never be reached with a chain on but it shows how far out of the line the axes of rotation are, it's not play in the mechanism, the cage is firmly in position

i always assumed it was by design, would be interested to know if others with sram red see the same difference in alignment

Please post some pics of what you are describing.... we might get a better picture with which to provide more advice. I have worked on countless SRAM rear mechs and have never experienced what you are describing, but I am very curious. I am most interested in the pivot slop that you describe....IME SRAM rear mechs have noticeably tighter pivots (and last longer through heavy use) compared to Shimano.
EM3

IT shifts beautifully. However, once in gear it sounds like a Sherman tank due to the pulley cage not being inline with the rear cogs.
A true testament to the toughness of their derailleurs is that I ran one that way for close to a year and it didn't just explode. Imagine how strong a derailleur has to be to survive being off center for 1,000's of K's. No slop in the cage or the body. The pulley bearings are still great as well. Mind you,, the teeth on the pulleys are in awful shape as you can well imagine.
I'm sure it's not an epidemic by any stretch and to be honest, the double tap shifters make the rewards far greater than the risks here. I was just curious as to if it was just me,, or have other folks noticed this. I'm going to try a couple of fresh hangers out this week and see if it makes it better, or worse. I have a full set of dropout and hanger tools, so I've just simply bent my current hanger to line up better (it's still far from perfect) with the gears. It'd be nice in the future though, if I didn't have to trash the hanger on every frame I own (And I own a lot) due to awful derailleur alignment.

Just for shits and giggles, should a new 7900 chain run smoothly over a new force derailleur? My KMC chain ran smooth as silk until it gave out from the stress after about a thousand K's.

same thing happened to me, brought a brand new rival medium cage to try out 11-32, the upper pulley does not line up with the cassette. My hanger had being aligned with parktool DAG-2 for like 10 times. The upper pulley and the cage is always tilted. It shifts fine but when riding, the chain grinds with the cassette teeth due to the tilted upper pulley.

I have rival wifli RD with force 11 Cassette and Red22 chain. No issues with my set up.


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